Conservatives should be forced to make a choice.
Do you want free trade, or do you want tighter immigration laws?
You can’t have both.
The giant sucking sound H. Ross Perot heard 15 years ago was the sound of Mexican jobs disappearing in Mexico following the passage of the NAFTA trade agreement. Mexicans had previously paid high prices for shoddy workmanship, but at least then they had jobs, in Mexico, making those shoddy goods. The home market was protected by tariffs.
When those tariffs went away the jobs did too. The only jobs Mexicans could then get were in the U.S. Thus we have the current situation, which we’re only exacerbating by signing free trade agreements with the Caribbean, with Central American, and with South America.
Free trade means free trade. You can’t open borders to goods then close them to people.
Europeans recognize this, and thus they have generally expanded the
European Union judiciously. They included requirements that countries
entering the EU respect democracy, human rights, and a whole host of EU
regulations.
It’s not a perfect system, but it has raised many countries out of
poverty, while keeping European labor rates competitive. Some 30 years
ago Spain, Portugal and Ireland were poor countries. Now they are
wealthy countries. Some 15 years ago the Czech Republic was a poor
country. Now it’s becoming a wealthy one.
Germany doesn’t use Spain to dump its industrial waste, and Spain doesn’t use Germany as a dumping ground for any failures in its labor laws. These are agreements among equals, and over time the aim is that they will become equals.
There are problems. Some of the EU’s newer members haven’t lived up to
their side of the bargain when it comes to democracy or human rights. Some of the EU’s older members, as a result,
haven’t lived up to their side of the bargain when it comes to labor.
But everyone is committed, by treaty, to working it out. It’s messy, it’s haphazard, it’s bureaucratic, but only morons would go back on it.
We don’t have that luxury. We should either close our labor markets by ending NAFTA, CAFTA, and the rest,
or we should tell those on the right who are complaining to put a sock
in it. Conservatives fought for these trade agreements. Conservatives
are now complaining the loudest about immigration. So it’s
conservatives who need to engage the debate.
Now, will the TV networks hold the Republicans’ feet to the fire on
this? I’m not betting on it, but you can help. Write your local TV news
crew, write your local newspaper, and tell them that if we’re to have a
debate on immigration, we also need to debate NAFTA.
NAFTA has blown up in the face of neo-cons for the same reason as Iraq — their illogical belief that you can separate economic and social issues. With Iraq, they thought we could liberate them from Saddam and then they could quickly sort out any social issues and become great consumers for Haliburton and Bechtel. With NAFTA, they thought by making Mexico a vassal state the Mexicans would be inspired to improve their own country. Instead, the Mexicans realized it would be easier to abandon ship than try and reform all the domestic corruption and meanwhile American corporations realized that by abetting this behavior they could get cheap labor without having to actually move production out of the US.
NAFTA has blown up in the face of neo-cons for the same reason as Iraq — their illogical belief that you can separate economic and social issues. With Iraq, they thought we could liberate them from Saddam and then they could quickly sort out any social issues and become great consumers for Haliburton and Bechtel. With NAFTA, they thought by making Mexico a vassal state the Mexicans would be inspired to improve their own country. Instead, the Mexicans realized it would be easier to abandon ship than try and reform all the domestic corruption and meanwhile American corporations realized that by abetting this behavior they could get cheap labor without having to actually move production out of the US.